I'm Not What You Attacked Me For
by WrappedInNight
Summary: Grey grew up on the streets, after being abandoned by her father when she was three and after watching her mother die when she was seven. Now, at seventeen, Grey watches over the younger street kids and does whatever she needs to in order to keep them alive and safe. When the Avengers follow her home and attack her, she has to learn to adjust and keep everyone safe.
1. Chapter 1

Grey leaned heavily against the cold steel, using the excuse of closing the large warehouse doors to rest and breathe. She held her breath, trying to force her harsh loud gasps into regular and quiet ones.

After she got the doors closed, Grey bolted, ignoring the already painful burn in her legs and chest as she bolted to the darkest corner of the room. She could have sworn she already heard the dreaded sounds right outside the warehouse -stamping boots, the sound of a propelled rocket, faint yelling and harsh commands- but she pushed the feeling of her sinking gut to the back of her mind and focused on the task at hand.

As soon as it was in reach, Grey reached out in the dark for the rope she knew was there and started climbing. She'd hardly reached the top of the rope and was reaching for one of the steel ceiling beams when the warehouse doors burst open. Swearing under her breath, Grey stealthily pulled herself onto the beam and started to drag herself forward, keeping her chest and thighs pressed to the cold metal.

"Where'd she go?!" Grey stopped crawling. She was still about fifty or so feet from her destination, but she didn't feel secure enough to keep moving. Shit.

"We all saw her come in," the red, white, and blue clad man at the front of the warehouse spoke out. "Hawkeye, any sign of her around back?"

Grey pressed herself closer to the metal, trying to hide all her limbs in the dark before she resumed her path forward at a slow and careful crawl.

A man in a black and purple uniform appeared on the ground beneath her, jogging in through the back door with a bow in his hand. "Negative Cap, no sign of her."

"She wasn't that far ahead of us, maybe twenty seconds or so." Grey froze. The metal muffled voice has sounded just beneath her, way too close for someone who Grey hadn't even seen approach. "The doors closed a few seconds before I shot them open, there's no way she ran across and out the warehouse in that time."

Grey watched, hidden in the shadows, as the three avengers she could see made their way to the middle of the old warehouse. She was immensely thankful that the building no longer had power, as well as the fact that it was too dark for any of them so see her without some careful searching.

"Nat, anything on your end?" Hawkeye spoke into what Grey assumed was a headset. She growled quietly.

"How many of these fuckers are there, anyways?" Grey whispered to herself. She debated whether or not she should risk crawling a little faster. The small gap in the warehouse wall that she knew led to safety was only a few seconds away if she made a break for it. But…

"She's not on Nat's side of the warehouse," Hawkeye informed the rest the team, dropping his hand from his headset. "Ironman?"

Grey paused her thinking, peeking over the beam's edge for the metal Avenger. He was hovering next to his team, looking around the warehouse. "Jarvis, can you scan for any heat signatures other than the team?" Grey froze. Time moved slow as she thought through his words. If he could actually see every heat signature in the building…

"Hey!" She stood on her beam, forgetting her own safety and yelling at the men below her. She stiffened when they looked up at her in shock, but the looks on their faces a moment later combined with her own emotion pushed her to run the length of the beam towards the rope again. Maybe if she could get there and slide down, she could make a break for the door and hide in the woods…

"Agh!" Grey lost her balance, stumbling and gripping her shoulder where the shaft of an arrow was protruding.

"Fuck!" She made a tipped, making a grab for the edge of the beam. Her meager grip didn't support her body weight, as her fingers knocked uselessly against the steel beam and she tumbled to the warehouse floor a couple stories down. She landed hard on her back, knocking the wind out of her and smashing her head backwards against the concrete ground. Grey clutched at the arrow wound, mostly just to have something to hold onto and ground her. The pain radiating over her body was stunning, but it wasn't the worst she'd experienced. Still the world spun around her and she couldn't hold back the slight curses as she tried to focus. She blinked, trying to clear the blurry image from view to make out any shapes. Before she could her mind together, Grey felt someone push her onto her stomach. The rest of the arrow snapped, pushing the stump of the shaft a little further into her shoulder and making her grind her teeth to clear the tears from her eyes.

The body on top of her was straddling her hips, one hand pushing her head into the ground and another pinning her arm behind her back. None of this was helping her situation, and her injured body was screaming in protest. She couldn't breathe, couldn't move, and couldn't think.

"Who are you?!" The voice above her yelled. Grey could make out red hair and green eyes bent over her shoulder to look her in the face, but nothing else was quite registering. The redhead had their whole body pressed against Grey's back, keeping her firmly pressed and held to the ground. It might have turned her on if she wasn't in so much pain.

Another voice sounded, slightly further away and more masculine. "Did HYDRA send you? What do they want?!" She closed her eyes, trying to clear what was becoming a massive, thumping headache from her mind. Too many voices, too much going on, she couldn't focus.

"Answer us!" Yet another voice. Grey turned her head as much as she could towards this one, looking up at another arrow a few inches from her face, pulled back by someone too blurry for Grey to make out.

"So there's quite a few of you bastards then-" Grey rasped quietly, laughing almost to herself before her vision went dark.


	2. Chapter 2

Grey felt the pain radiating throughout her body before she even opened her eyes. She groaned quietly, forgetting about trying to survey the situation before letting her captors know she was awake. She tried to blink, pushing herself up on the hard bed. Unfortunately, the grimace that pulled her face at the pain shooting through her shoulder wasn't something she could hold back.

"What the ever-living fu-" Grey whispered, leaning forward on the mattress and gripping her shoulder. She could feel a bandage through the light material of her shirt, and she wondered to herself why her captors would bother fixing her wound.

Her captors.

Grey sat straight up, letting her arm fall to her side. This time she was able to hide the pain, and her face didn't show a glimpse of the agony shooting through her whole body. She was sore, bruised from her fall. Her shoulder ached and stung, and she figured whoever dug the arrow out hadn't been too careful.

The room was small, she noticed. Just four white walls, perfectly clean and bare. Grey swung her feet slowly off the bed as she surveyed the room. Beside her bed, which was really just a thin mattress on what looked like a surgeon's table, her new prison seemed to be completely empty. Grey pushed off the table to stand next to it, gripping the edge of the metal frame as she adjusted to her shaky position.

Don't be weak. This is nothing, suck it up and knock it off.

Grey stood straight, letting go of the table and mentally berating herself for the slight tremble her legs gave. This is stupid, I'm really not hurt. Grey shook her head, noticing the hard cement floor under her bare feet. All that happened were results of my own carelessness. Noticing the ground led Grey's gaze to her legs. A simple shot to the shoulder and a short fall. Bare feet, bare legs, and a thin long sleeved nightgown. At least they'd had the decency to provide her with clothing, she'd had a few incidents over the years that had been much more degrading.

The white nightgown was at least thick enough not to really show anything, but Grey still had to resist crossing her arms over her chest. Stupid. In her brief review of her body, she noticed that none of her appendages were handcuffed or tied to the metal bed she'd woken up on. Sensing some type of freedom, she allowed herself a few steps forward.

As she started getting used to the headache blurring her vision, Grey noticed with a shock that not all the walls were as bare as she'd originally thought them to be. One of the walls, right in front of her and in plain view of the bed, was covered in a dark grey window.

They've been watching you.

Grey winced internally, feeling the urge to wrap her hand around something hot. How rookie could she be not to notice the painfully obvious one-way window. Prince would be disappointed.

She stood with her eyes closed, facing the window but head tilted down at her feet. She needed to get a grip on her emotions and focus, try to figure out the who, what, when, where, why, and how.

Is what she should do.

However.

Grey opened her eyes, glanced up at the one-way with a smirk, and then turned on her heel. Whoever was behind that window was watching her for some reason, and they wanted her alive since they hadn't let her die from her earlier wounds. She made her way to the bed, swiping the mattress onto the floor and pushing it with her foot to the corner of the room.

There wasn't any food or water, and she couldn't see a door anywhere in the room. Obviously there had to be some way in and out, and Grey felt slightly vulnerable not knowing where this opening was. However, doors weren't usually placed in corners. So the furthest corner from the one-way seemed like a good bet, and Grey plopped herself down on the mattress.

Her body immediately relaxed, finding comfort on the hard mattress. Grey's muscles relaxed, and she felt hunger and exhaustion bein to bleed through the mask of pain she'd been fighting off. This was not ideal. Heaving a quick sigh, Grey pushed herself back off the mattress and back toward the naked metal frame in the middle of the room. She kicked it onto its side and planted her foot on it's cold surface. Holding back another glance and smirk at the one-way, she grabbed onto one of the beds support rods and yanked. The welding held for a few thrusts, but before her shoulder gave out the rod finally tore away from the rest of the frame.

Now her body was screaming, and she knew she'd torn through the stitches in her shoulder. Her already tired and aching muscles were stiffening, and Grey knew that her body was extremely angry at her and far from the relaxed point it had just a moment ago reached.

However, looking down at the sturdy and sharp edged metal rod in her hands, Grey felt a slight peace wash over her mind. She felt just a bit safer than she had before, and her head felt a bit clearer. This was good.

She made her way back to the comfort of the mattress pushed against the corner and kicked it out of the way. She settled between the edge of the softer surface and the wall, then sat down on the cold cement with her new weapon in hand. She drew her knees to her chest and clutched the metal rod, situating so she could see the other walls and the one-way (and so that her unfortunate apparel covered everything).

Her shoulder had started bleeding through her nightgown, her body was aching and sore, and her hands were slightly bloody from yanking on the metal frame's rough welding. Her mind was clearing, and her vision was focusing. This was good.


End file.
